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On Prospects for Liberation in 2012 via @Peta_de_Aztlan

For sure the year of 2011 will be remembered as the Year of Revolt and The Protestor. Early in the year we witnessed the Arab Spring with a series of regional revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and later Libya; then the American Autumn spearheaded by Occupy Wall Street was like manna from heaven for many progressive people. The whole world and power relationships were transformed in many ways, including the way the masses look at the practical necessity and logical possibility of fighting back against the evil dark forces in the world and the potential success of manufacturing a true Global Revolution. When united together we can win!

However, 2011 was not all peaches and cream, there were tears and bloodbaths. Real lives were lost when real people died, especially when people got actively and personally involved in regional revolts in the streets of Arabia. Here in the USA it is morbid and bizarre how deaths in foreign countries do not have the same psychological affect on ‘national’ consciousness as deaths in the USA, as if those lives lost in foreign countries have less value. Every innocent life has an inherent value unto itself. All innocent life is sacred. Unfortunately, the Amerikan psyche with its patriotic nationalism still sees itself as the center of the world. Even the term America is used by U.S. citizens strictly in reference to the United States of America, forgetting the millions of people in the rest of the Americas. I use the term Amerika with a ‘k’ in relation to the U.S.A.

#OWS Movement

In 2011, the whole Occupy Wall Street Movement or #OWS had the greatest positive impact on what can loosely be termed the American progressive movement in the USA. I type loosely because those who consider themselves progressives can range from hard core radicals, to leftists, to activists, to anarchists, to liberals ~ in relation to surface labels for political orientation. These surface labels can be divisive and superficial so we should not lightly throw blankets on people.

For example, we should evolve beyond the bi-polarity of the Left-wing Vs. the Right-wing in our thinking. The truth is in the center, not confined to any one political wing. We are not in a cowboys vs. the Indians world (Indians are really from India). Not all the good guys here are on one side and all the bad guys on the other side. Some people can be progressive in many areas, then be conservative or even arch-reactionary in other areas.

In life, all is not a ‘either-or’ ‘black-and-white’ situation. There are multiple options, many colors, shades and hues. Life today is complex, ever-changing and thus our thinking needs to be able to reflect the changing complexity of real life.

In connected reality, the #OWS movement is not a single streamlined unified movement with top-down rank-and-file members due to its claim to being leaderless without any set list of specific demands. It is more of a matrix of scattered occupy sites throughout the country involved in many related humane rights issues and causes. This initial approach gave it the flexibility of its early success. It avoided comrades splitting hairs in fruitless ideological struggles based upon different ideologies. Ideology is a system of ideas and ideals for analysis, not a new religion.

The #OWS Movement symbolizes the ‘rebel’ archetype that was already present in the American psyche. In opposition to the ‘rebel’ archetype is the ‘tyrant’ archetype that seeks the elimination of rebel forces. Many people were already angry and disgusted at the System. #OWS was able to tap into that general discontent. It is natural that a lot of progressive activists, writers and intellectuals jumped onto the #OWS bandwagon to try to get mileage from it for their own particular agendas. We should love each other, help each other, learn from each other and share our experiences together. Nevertheless, we must be honest about our inner motives and our true motivations.

Leaders will naturally come into the vanguard in any viable social movement in the process of struggle, whether or not they are ‘official’ leaders, not isolated from class-cultural struggles in the streets. Every leader must ultimately lead his or her own self, discourage blind followers and help cultivate the leadership qualities of people who are in the immediate environment.

Our Present Situation

We cannot pretend to now be in a widespread revolutionary situation. A revolutionary situation can only be the result of long years of hard work and even long decades of living in a genuine revolutionary cultural climate under the banner of liberation, free of fear and free of the influence of past generations who have endured oppression.

For example, we will not eliminate racism until we overthrow the unjust System that empowers institutionalized racism. To be radical should be natural, but appears radical in a reactionary situation. Those of us here in the USA have all been infected in widely different degrees by being raised in a cold inhumane society with widely different living situations among the U.S. population. The people of the USA as a whole are counter-revolution, though many support basic economic reforms they refuse to see the validity of real revolutionary transformation. The psycho-social disease of racism is still strong among many of us. In other countries there is a lot of tribal and religious sectarianism. The evilness of ruthless reaction still rules supreme in the world. We are in a reactionary situation governed by a fascist rogue regime that legitimizes its immoral foreign and domestic policies. POTUS Obama is a corporate puppet and traitor to those who elected him.

Towards Global Revolution!

A true revolution requires a radical transformation of property relations between the 99% of the ‘have-nots’ and the 1% of the ‘haves’. We cannot mechanically make a revolutionary movement template and import it to fit all objective situations. Wall Street is not Tahrir Square. Each local region will have its own characteristics. You may live in a big city where there is a lot of political activism or you may live in a small apathetic town or village. Each of us function from our own geographical-existential location. We need to make constant concrete analyses of concrete conditions in a given situation and keep our feet on the ground.

For example, in Egypt the revolutionary struggle is still happening, psycho-social forces are still battling and the revolution is not completed. Many comrades confuse a regional revolt with a real revolution. The old military regime is still in power and secure in Egypt. It is up to the Egyptian people to free themselves completely, the same way it is up to the American people of our continent to free ourselves. We in the USA are being pompous and arrogant when we propose to offer unsought for advice to other comrades in other countries. We have work to be done here now.

We cannot really claim any kind of peaceful revolution in any given country when people have died in streets battles. We should strive for peaceful revolution, but not be under any insane illusions. We need to exhaust all peaceful methods of struggle, engage in mass education and arouse the masses to revolt against all forms of tyranny. The more people we reach now the less damage will be done later, including among those who now oppose revolution and are reactionary now. We need to have the loving patience to convince others of the validity of our ideas and ideals. If we cannot then maybe we should re-examine our ideas and ideals, fine-tune our concepts.

The Maoist maxim remains: politics is war without blood and war is politics with bloodshed. In connected reality, the activities of war and politics are inherently and intimately interconnected.

How do we create Global Revolution? How do we all work together and coordinate our efforts on a global scale? We need to understand how the Amerikan Empire works. What are its strengths and weaknesses? When will we know when legal and peaceful means have been clearly exhausted? What roles will different segments of the general population have on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes questions are more important than answers because they spice up our consciousness and motivate us to think things out, think things through. Often answers lead us to greater questions.

Whatever happens now we need to keep the movement alive, however you conceive of ‘the movement’ in general. A movement must move forward with its own natural momentum, be nurtured by our blood, sweat and tears. Each of us can be a movement of our own being, striving to better understand our own being and seeking to understand other struggling beings. I will never tire of repeating that we human beings are all of the same human family. We are one endangered species of life upon Mother Earth and we must accept our role as collective stewards of Mother Earth.

We must come to the understanding that we are already living under a mature fascism here now inside the United States. The ultimate aim of Amerikan Fascism is to destroy all authentic revolutionary consciousness. We must continue to raise, develop and expand our own liberated consciousness as we work to create liberated zones under our community control.

“In the US, the federal government has spent an estimated $34 billion since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to arm state and local police forces with battlefield-grade hardware. Investigative reporting has also revealed cross-pollination of anti-protest training: local police from cities like Austin, Texas, have been sent to Israel for training in crowd control and other tactics.” ~ Naomi Wolf @naomirwolf

We can thank POTUS Obama for teaching us that what is required today is more than another smiley face in the White House. POTUS Obama betrayed the many who helped to elect him. He is a puppet of the corporate masters. To be fair to those who voted for Obama, such as myself, he almost seemed like a Messiah after eight years under Fuhrer Bush. Choosing the lessor of two evils is no longer a rational option. We need to utilize the electoral system, political campaigns and influence political parties as a platform for a revolutionary humane rights agenda, yet, once again, have no insane illusions. We need to welcome the urgent core solution of a humane Global Revolution as a great leap forward in our collective humane evolution.

Internet Power

No one can now doubt the great impact that Internet Power, social media and communications technology has had on our lives and on global social movements in general. We now have the potential to communicate to anyone in the world at the speed of electricity. Connected with the idea of Internet Power is the basic necessity of helping others in our lives learn how to operate a computer, to become computer literate and learn how to do Internet navigation. We must comprehend the principle of concentration on the coordination of communications. Both Twitter and Facebook are major social networking websites that millions of us use now. Yahoo Groups can help in our social networking, but in many ways they have outlived their usefulness because they reach a small segment of people when we need global communications.

We need to be able to dialogue and strive to reach a general consensus without having to agree on everything. Each of us can have our own spin on subjects. We should remain respectful of different opinions and avoid ego-inflation common to many groups and individuals. We do not always have to be proven right, but we must respect different truths. We are learning by communicating together seeking the common unity of global revolutionary consciousness.

Prospects for Liberation

The prospects for liberation in 2012 look great. The #OWS Movement will continue to expand in ways we cannot now foresee. It will continue to grow and reach different nodal points, branch out in new ways and survive as we strive together towards Global Revolution.

We need to build a multi-racial humane rights movement, especially uniting with Black and Brown peoples with an emphasis on our common needs. Yes, we are all of one human race, but racial categories still exist and what ‘race’ one is still registers in our consciousness when we see someone. We cannot afford to be naive when lives are a stake. White racism is still a major obstacle to our collective unity inside the United States. We need to unite and fight in solidarity.

The #OWS Movement has helped to keep the urgency of activism before us, but there is a lot of basic infrastructure building to be done. We need to at least create local community offices that can serve as gathering centers for our local meetings, as a nexus for community services and help provide for the basic survival needs of the people as much as we can.

We need a general strategy with an appropriate set of tactics. We cannot win by anger or fervor alone without mass mobilization and local community organizing. Ultimately our grand general strategy should be to seize state power, takeover the land, redistribute the corporate wealth and create community control of all the viable social institutions in society. We need to witness basic accomplishments to see that global major successes are possible. Alas, many of us are hungry now and do not even have a strong roof over our heads at night. Survival, pending revolution!

At the same time, we need to work on our spiritual growth and rid ourselves of core character defects that hinder or block unity, our solidarity and our humanity. All of us must rid ourselves of any remnants of racism and other forms of negativism. Do not look at the situation as stuff to only be changed ‘out there’ independent of your own personal consciousness. We too need to change, to evolve and to work on our own character defects, not always be pointing an accusing finger at others and forgetting to look in a clean clear mirror.

All along the way we must not let ourselves be divided and pitted against each other on the basis of any personal orientation, such as, sex, race, nation, culture, tribe or any other artificial division that separates us from each other as humane beings, are one family of humankind. In essence, we have a long ways to go and our journey involves our being aware of our beingness here now.

Towards A Global Humane Rights Movement

We need to coordinate a Global Humane Rights Movement ~ along with continuing to actively support other liberation movements. There are social movements needed in many areas that directly and/or indirectly involve a basic respect for the sanctity of humane rights of all peoples. Many diverse movements need to spark mass imagination, to evolve in creative ways and develop as much as they can to achieve our goals and our common dreams. We must help one another, not be afraid of creative criticism and know that we are all in this thing of ours together.

All our various Social Movements have the common denominator of supporting humane rights, advocating for humane rights and respecting the sanctity of humane rights for all people. For examples we have:

~ the Black Liberation Movement

~ the Civil Rights movement

~ the Disability Rights Movement

~ the Homeless Refugee Rights Movement

~ the Immigrant Rights Movement

~ the Latino Liberation Movement

~ the Lesbian and Gay Rights Movement

~ the Prisoners Rights Movement

~ the Women’s Liberation Movement

~ the Voting Rights Movement

~ and others Social Movements with specific demands and target groups.

Those lists here are in alpha order, nor from most important to the least important. Think of talking circles, upward spirals, not be stuck in a traditional top-down hierarchy on a linear plane.

For sure we must stay alive, alert and aware of any dramatic or subtle changes in the global, regional and local environments. No one has a working crystal ball. We must abandon any gutless gurus or spaced-out New Agers who mislead us from our basic survival priorities.

Let our lives be guided by a pure love for the people. Let us have the bold courage to speak our truth to the world and the humility to learn from others. The way we see it; the way we want it. These are our lives in this lifetime. Let us strive to create a Global Revolution in our lifetime. We will always need to work on creating, cultivating and nurturing our relationships between each other as humane beings. There is a lot of being to be, a lot of doing to be done and a lot of creative imagination required.

We need do so much more than march in circles, petition a corrupt government, erect tents or occupy public space from which we can easily be evicted. We need discipline, direction and determination to further create constructive changes in our world. And yes, we need arms, tools and weapons to protect ourselves and safeguard our victories.

We need to believe in the righteousness of our common cause, have an undying faith in the people and believe in ourselves as individuals. We need to look at the big picture, work together with others who share our basic survival interests and not forget the decisive role of the creative being on an individual level. Each of us should be a leader in our own lives. Every follower is a potential leader. We do not want blind followers who can easily become agent provocateurs. We need as many leaders as we can get to help us with mass education and mass mobilization.

We must evolve into being truly humane humane beings who help each other, far beyond being mere human animals eating hand-to-mouth. We will not all share all the same ideas and ideals, yet we must seek a common humanity in relation to having care, concern and compassion for all living beings upon Mother Earth.

P.S. Forgive the rambling verbosity above. I self-clarify stuff by typing about it all. I am actually a typer, not a writer. Take the time to share your own thoughts and opinions about what is going on in the world. Sharing is caring and I am here sharing to those who follow the path with heart. Namaste!